Talk:Crossovers
Recommend deletion This article is a bit artificial in my view. I'm not sure of its focus, nor its necessity. Basically this is an awfully long-winded way to do what the character infoboxes already do: show which episodes of each show the two characters appeared in. It's also factually inaccurate: "The Bionic Woman" and "The Return of the Bionic Woman" aren't in any way crossovers. There was no television series for Lyndsay Wagner to crossover from. Wagner is unambiguously a recurring guest-star in those instances. Outside of those introductory episodes, it's sorta hard to claim true "crossover' status, when the two shows share 2/3ds of a common regular cast, and virtually all of the recurring cast. A crossover really requires more than one character to be a crossover. Because the shows share Oscar, Rudy, Helen, Jim, and Callahan, the difference between a SMDM show and a BW show is just one person. So if Jaime shows up on SMDM, is that really a crossover or just her doing a guest shot? Personally, I think it's the latter. The other point to make is the ease with which many of these so-called "crossovers" were re-labeled in syndication. Does it particularly matter to the narrative that "Kill Oscar (Part II)" was an SMDM episode? Do viewers care that "The Return of Bigfoot (Part II)" was actually a BW episode? Not in the least. It's an interesting historical fact which series had which episode, of course, and so we care about documenting it on the wiki. But the fact that the producers themselves have effectively changed which series these episodes belong to indicates that when the two actors are together the name of the series doesn't really matter. In any case, this page is redundant of the Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers pages. CzechOut ☎ | 15:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC) :My initial reaction to this article was similar: it's little more than a list, the content of which is already covered elsewhere. But then, I've seen lists on wikis before, and lists can be fun. Also, I'm sure somebody, someday will visit this wiki with the sole intention of discovering how many times Steve and Jaime worked together and the circumstances for those team-ups. A character/actor infobox won't provide that kind of detail and full episode articles might provide more than our visitor is willing to scroll through. But with proper fleshing out this has the potential to become a quality article -- a short one, but equitable nonetheless. And while Jaime's initial appearances on Six Mill are not Crossovers, they sow the lineage. Perhaps Team-ups would be a better name, I don't know. What would we type into the keyword search? — Paul (talk) 18:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC) ::Yes Paul, you've mirrored my thinking. CzechOut is certainly right to quarrel with the title; I chose it reverse-engineering from a hypothetical search. I also foresee expanding the article to discuss the synergies as one show gave birth to another. The SMDM eps early on are the "gestation period" but no less valid to the visitor curious as to how much screentime the 2 leads shared. I also believe that the character pages each lack the focus here, and that a character-neutral overview is valuable. Remember, this is not just scholarship; we are giving tools to the community, and I think this will fill a need. Love the debate! --Major Sloan 19:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC) :::I'm still not convinced of the utility of the thing. This notion of "characterizing" the nature of the crossover is a potential, and certainly unnecessary, quagmire. For instance, as it stands right now, the article calls "The Deadly Missiles" a "cameo" appearance of Steve Austin on BW. I certainly don't look at it that way. Steve has an important function within the plot (exposition about the nature of the radar blackout), and appears in more than one scene, so he's not a cameo by any generally-accepted definition of the word. The other appearances on the list are equally ambiguous. They all provide something of importance to the plot or emotional discoveries of the episode in question. They are all "special guest appearances", in the full meaning of the phrase. :::Plus, where do we drawn the line? Is Callahan a "crossover" character? Is Rudy? Are Helen and Jim? The lead gives a quite unsubstantiated definition of a crossover that confines things to Jaime or Steve being in the "opposite" program, but that's a wholly invented and convenient definition. To me, the neutral, easy thing to do is to leave it to the character infoboxes to sort out the comings and goings of each character. As it stands, or even as it appears to be planned, this article is largely a series of opinions wrapped around a list. :::Still believe the thing should be deleted. CzechOut ☎ | 02:58, 26 January 2008 (UTC) ::::Funny how I agree with your arguments, yet not your conclusions. "The Deadly Missiles" is a big deal for Steve, esp. considering the ending, and I appreciate your sticking up for him. Steve is my homie! As I said above, I'm happy to expand on this in the future to give the particulars their due. The division into 3 categories is loose and largely defined by production phases; between January and June of '76 there were several appearances that were not full crossovers- Special Appearances is fine by me. My "characterizing" the appearances resulted from a sense of obligation to structure the article, and if you have alternates in mind, by all means. The two crossovers of Fall 1976 were definitely special cases. C.O. you questioned: ...the ease with which many of these so-called "crossovers" were re-labeled in syndication. Does it particularly matter to the narrative that "Kill Oscar (Part II)" was an SMDM episode? Do viewers care that "The Return of Bigfoot (Part II)" was actually a BW episode? ::::This is an area where I feel no need to equivocate. The episodes changed shows when the "A" story was handed to the opposite lead. Both Steve and Jaime were injured in "The Return of Bigfoot" and "Kill Oscar," respectively, requiring the opposite lead to take the baton. One look at Amazon.UK will show you complaints 30 years later about "The Return of Bigfoot (Part II)" not being included on TBW Season Two. It was easy 'cause they did it cheap, not reprinting the supers for either (only "Welcome Home, Jaime" got the deluxe "Series reassignment surgery"). The producers needed to sell the shows separately, so they had to eliminate dependencies. It was a pure business decision. ::::I care. If I could get Universal to do one thing right beyond going to back to film for the remasters, it would be to restore the original air form of all the Bionic materials, particularly the original telefilms (perhaps in their own box with the episodic versions in with Season One). Maybe include the rebranded versions by seamless branching. Now distributing the shows as syndicated is fine; I expect buyers of Season Two of The Bionic Woman would be most upset if "Kill Oscar (Part II)" was missing. It is still an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, however, starring Lee Majors (uncredited as it stands), with the production team and music from that show. Slapping different credits on the head and tail was a cheap hack job then, and holds up even less today. The class act of course would be to release the crossovers on both sets, but hey we're still waiting on a release of any kind. If you really want your head to explode, I'll send you the white paper I authored on "The Perfect Release" aka If Wishes Were Horses, LOL. ::::I'm feeling that your objection to the article is a philosophical one more than any one issue you've raised. Do you feel that addressing the two shows' intersections is not worth an article? Must all such discussion choose a side? No show-neutral discussion? When the shows aired, the boundaries were blurred. Changes for syndication made the lines more clear; many have only seen the shows in syndication since and could be informed by approaching the joint appearances as an overview. ::::If there's a consensus that this article doesn't have a place, I'll take it down personally. I think I've said what can be said, thanks for sharing your thoughts. --Major Sloan 04:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC) :::::I think this article definitely has a place in this wiki. The page serves as a quick reference to fans who want to know when the main star/character appeared in the other's series. Whatever it's title, or the exact incarnation of the article, I do believe we should develop it. Karen (talk) 05:45, 26 January 2008 (UTC) ::::::But there's the rub. Is it a "quick reference" or is it a contextual description? If the former, it's entirely redundant of what already exists on the character pages themselves. If it's the latter, it threatens strongly to become an essay. (It's already an essay; the definition of "crossover" in the lead can't be supported by citation or even common sense; the editor has just decided that's the definition he or she is going to employ.) ::::::And the question of title is an important one that can't just be pushed to the side. What do we call the article such that it's a) accurate and b) findable? Personally I think that once the infoboxes begin to saturate the database, it won't take long for the average user to understand that if they want to know where a character appeared, they have to do little more than look for the character page. ::::::As for the question of being "philosophically opposed" to this article, I suppose I am, on the grounds that it rests on a tenuous foundation. If you wish to discuss the reasons and rationales for so-called "crossovers", the best place to do that is in the woefully undeveloped articles on the television series themselves. This sort of discussion, provided it can be properly cited, belongs at The Six Million Dollar Man and, perhaps especially, The Bionic Woman. There's nothing of any real use at either of those pages in terms of understanding the production history of the shows. The whys and wherewithals of one actor appearing on the other's show, or of the need to have sprawling, multi-part "epics", is something best discussed there. After all, we aren't really defining the term "crossover", we're explaining a facet of the original broadcast of the shows themselves. CzechOut ☎ | 15:35, 26 January 2008 (UTC) :::::::I'm all for developing the series' articles, as daunting a task as it may be. I notice that the wiki here tends to divide along show lines without much of a corpus callosum; I'd like to rectify that. Whether the list remains a list, and synergies are discussed elsewhere or here, tethering the discussion to one show or another not only sets the conditions for show bias (as future editors will invariably be those who are more familiar with the show in question), it encourages "meta" material to be lost to readers of the opposite show. I'm sure Universal was focused on making both shows succeed, and that joint effort is part of why staying detached may be a more honest way to view the interconnect between the series. My own personal bias is The Six Million Dollar Man, but I want neither to give The Bionic Woman short shrift, nor to have fans of that show miss out because the "metadata" is in with the other one. :::::::As to defining "crossover", it's purely internal, building a common language to enable discussion. If Team-ups, or Joint Appearances would be more accurate, I'm game, I just ran a search for "crossover/s and found nothing, so I "filled the need." One of the advantages of computers and the internet is the ability not only to find information, but to sift and sort it into forms that best apply to the researchers' needs. This is an alternate way of presenting this data such that a subset of those interested will get what they're looking for (see Paul's comment above). Every time we check our email, the real work isn't finding what we want, but eliminating what we don't want (spam). People who are looking for this will drown in the larger articles. :::::::The particular criticisms are something we can work on, the lead-in can be reworked. I just don't see how an aspect of the overall production needs to be shoehorned into one or another of the shows' articles. --Major Sloan 20:58, 26 January 2008 (UTC)